Now I have a good friend who lets me use his mage for my Disenchanting needs so I haven't seen a big need to bring the Warrior over, plus I like having a toon on Allianceside to drop by and say hello.

I’m wondering if it would make sense to change my Professions with an eye to making more gold. I'm just basically treading water moneywise. I make enough to cover my repair bills, enchants, gems, etc but not a whole lot more. This week in particular with the upgrades I’ve gotten and bought, on 3 toons no less, I’m down about 5k. I'm not looking to become some WoW Mogul. I'd just like to be able to do stuff like buying up Primordial Saronites, getting Epic Flying for my Druid and Hunter and maybe buy a Motorcycle.

I'm happy with JC/Mining on my Paladin. Although he doesn't mine much anymore, he still likes being able to cut my his own gems and Dragonseyes are sexy. I make a little money with his JC buying uncut gems and cutting them and reselling. The problem I have is that many times on Altar of Storms cut gems are selling for LESS than uncut gems, which makes that particular way of making money rather difficult.

My Hunter's professions were basically for him to make money while he leveled up. The intention was that he would be a farmer for me, especially back when Honors was JC/Engineering. Now that he's become part of Raid Team III, he’s actively raiding. Basically all I do to make money with him is send stuff he mines or skins over to my bank mule to sell.

My Druid was Leatherworking with the idea he would make Leg Armors for Honorshammer and also to sell. Here again, like Honors JC, I'm finding that the Armors are selling for LESS than mats and I'm still at the point of having to burn Heavey Boreans to level up his Leatherworking to where he can make more stuff.

What I don't have my arsenal is an Herbalist.

So here's what I've been planning. Change the Druid to Herb/Alchemy. This fills the Herb hole so I can serve that market with raw materials. I'll go transmute spec so he can do Epic Gem transmutes for Honors, reducing the material cost for my raw gems and allowing me to sell at a lower price with a higher margin.

I could keep the Hunter as my Skinner, but switch his other profession over to Engineering. I tell myself it is to get him into the Arrow/Bullet market but the truth is I've always enjoyed Engineering. It was just a horrible profession for a tank when Honors had it, especially compared to mining. I wonder if engineering (in and of itself) provides a DPS increase like Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, Jewelcrafting, Enchanting, etc do. I've had and dropped Engineering twice on Honorshammer, but each time I enjoyed it.

But I've been holding off executing my plan. It might be prudent to wait to see what the Devs are going to do with Professions in Cataclysm. Apparently, it's supposed to be much easier to level up a profession, so it might be better to wait and see. You can reference this article from ShackNews. In the article, Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime, states that Blizzard expects Cataclysm to arrive in the "back half of 2010." Now we can add that to the other clues we have. There was the comment the Devs made at Blizzcon 2009 that they thought "Alliance players will be complaining about Goblin Rogues at next year's Blizzcon". The community now knows that Blizzcon 2010 is scheduled for October. I'm thinking they don't want to release the Expansion immediately before they leave the offices for Blizzcon. The 'back half of 2010' is technically anytime from June to December. That makes me think Blizzard execs are targeting an August/September release. If that's right we should start hearing about Beta really soon.

But that is still over 6 months away. As we get closer to Cataclysm, demand for current end games items like Flasks, Gems, Enchants, Bullets/Arrows, and Leg Armors is going to go way down. At the beginning of Cataclysm new raw materials will be crazy expensive. Having a Miner, Skinner, and Herbalist would be a nice advantage. But going by my experience in Wrath I’ll only have time to play my main early on. I’ll need to watch Beta to see if there’s another Overcharged Capacitor type of opportunity in the early zones.

So I'm trying to make a decision on if I should 'pull the trigger' and change up these guys professions, or wait it out.

19 comments:

I have 5 lvl 80 toons. 4 Alliance 1 horde. The alliance alts are all there for my main. My paladin. I have a dk who is an herbalist/transmute specced alchemist, a warlock who is an enchanter/Elixir specced alchemist, and a warrior who is a miner/engineer. I make gold transmuting and selling the raw uncut gems. I get the blue quality gems and most of the eternals from the miner. I take a couple of hours a week and just mine for one then switch and herb for another.

My horde was my first paladin however when I decided to switch factions at the start of WoTLK, the only option was to re-roll. I would like to play her more but I don't really want to put in the effort to build up the same support structure that my alliance paladin has.

As you well know I never have an issue making gold in wow and here is how I currently do it:

Pally is mining/bs I mine 2 to 3 hours every few days 1 day is doing outland for adamantite and fel iron as they sell for 90g a stack on my server, the rest of the time is mining saronite which i send to my warrior who is transmute spec and turn in to titanium bars which i sell for 300g per 20.

I also buy all the netherweave stack for 5g or less a stack and make bags (since I always have lol) and make a good profit.

And eng is a good way to up dps on any toon..the glove haste ench is worth it.

You can make your own glyphs and shoulder enchants. You can sell glyphs and tomes. You will have herbs and frost lotus for flasks or you can sell the lotus on the AH. Either way, it is pretty good money.

You dont have to put up 1000 glyphs at a time to make money. I make around 1k gold a day and only repost once (or zero times) and put up the most profitable glyphs at that time.

Money problems are a thing of the past (250k on my Alliance server) and it is mostly thanks to Inscription.

I have found it difficult to make gold in WoW from professions without dedicating a lot of time and effort.

To me, perhaps the single easiest way to make gold is through alchemy transmutes. It is low risk and always high return. Spending 60-80 gold in AH materials will net you 185-200 gold in return. If you buy your materials wisely it gets better. If you have 30-40 minutes each week to farm Primal Fire, its even better. If your Icy Prism is nice to you, well, even better. I find Alchemy to be the best alt profession for this reason. Its 10 minutes of work each day for easy gold. The demand is always there.

If you have three alchemy mules, its easy to realize 300-400g a day profit. Better yet, Alchemy is dirt easy to level from scratch and easily the cheapest to power level.

The second best way I know to make money is re-listing items. Its a risky way to make money but also lucrative. The primary stumbling block for most people is they simply don't understand the market. Pick a couple items and learn the market and then jump into it. Pick say Scarlet Rubies. Watch them for a couple weeks and get a feel for the prices. Then, start buying low and re-listing high. Its easy, but you HAVE TO HAVE the knowledge of your servers market to make it work. Its high risk but high reward.

Other than that the best way to make gold in my opinion is to have a good dps alt that can kill level 80 mobs in 6 seconds or less. Warriors are great for this as Charge/Intercept really aid in reaching the next target. If you figure 15-20 silver a kill, 10 seconds per kill, your making 75g an hour w/o from just coin drop.

I know you can invest time in herbalism and makes some money.. but it seems to me (as someone who has tried it) a slow way to go.. Transmute is a nice money maker.. I was going to mine matts but eventually its easier to pay 50g for a cardinal ruby and eternal fire and turn it around for 200-250 (raw or sometimes more if my JC cuts it)...

Buying matts and reselling as JC/Alch/Ench/Glyph seems a better route. Keep a lot of synergy between things.. like Alch transmute Skyflare diamonds and give to JC to cut..

Just my 2 cents. I have just started dabbling in gold making and kinda suck but have collected 8k gold on my bank alt in like 2-3 weeks. Lame but I am learning.

Your idea to pick up alch with xmute spec is definately a good one. But might I suggest running it on honors rather than your hunter. You already have two toons with mining and I'm sure youare using mining for the stam bonus but te flask of stoneblood will have a greater affect if you are an alch as well as lasting twice as long. Thus your flask demand on your main raiding toon is cut in half and you get the bonus for all three specs.

It really depends on how much you are attached to the stam bonus from mining. From a min max bonus blacksmithing would probably be the way to go for the extra sockets and in cataclysm the reforging sounds like its going to be awesome. But that profession would probably only cost you money in the meantime.

I would personally wait on dropping any gathering profecions.My Paladin is Mining JC and has been since TBC but I've always wanted him to take up Blacksmithing.With Runeforging coming in Cataclysm I will have more reason than ever to do so.However with the prices that Ore will be selling for at release I plan to spend the 1st month of the xpac selling my Ore and once the price drops saving it up so when its no longer extremly profitable to sell the ore I can do JC and BS to cap in one go. Lets face it you wont really need them up to max that before 85 bar the odd nice peice for leveling so you might as well make good profit while you can.

I will also add @ EricYou never want to sell high when relisting on AH they just wont sell and you will be undercut, sure some will go eventually but that takes time and lots of relisting cost.Idealy you want to buy low and sell average, that way all your stock sells and you make more profit over all.

To those that recomend hours of farming, you have to remember that those mats are not free they cost you time. If you have the gold to put near that amount of time into buying cheep mats on trade and AH, you will end up with more product to sell and your profits will soon grow far outside of what farming could ever get you.

Alchemy Xmutes are a good consistent way to make gold, either through epic gems, or converting saronite bars to titanium bars, added benefit being cheaper titanium for your titansteel cooldowns. You are using each of your 3 titansteel cooldowns and selling them each day. Even if you are buying the mats out of the AH, thats still another 30-60g / cooldown each day.

I'm a big fan of inscription for making money. Although if you do level a herbalist, and your guild is willing to help you 1 time, clear everything to Frea in Uld 10, and clear the keepers, then you can go in, and farm 40-60 frost lotus in a hour, and just keep extending the raid lockout there. It will make your flasks a LOT cheaper, and you can sell them on most servers now days for 70g+ each, and thats a LOT of gold for 1 hours work.

Inscription is a bit more complicated though, and requires a good understanding of the market and how to make money with it. Its also fairly addon intensive. I'll do another comment with info on inscription.

When going full speed, you will most likely have 2-3 bank alts with full 32 slot inscription bags, completely filled with glyphs.

Buy herbs out of the AH for 10-15g / stack, and use a milling macro to convert them to pigments. Convert pigments to Ink of the Sea which can then be exchanged for any lower level ink from the ink vendor in dal. This gives you a good consistent price on inks, and a simple way to get them. Generally you will be milling a ton of Adder's Tongue, and Icethorn.

/cast Milling/use Adder's Tongue/use Icethorn

that macro when hit repeatedly while watching tv or something will mill a ton of herbs in a short time.

second you will need Altoholic, Skillet, KTQ (Kev Tool Queue), Lil Sparkey's workshop, Postal, and QA3 (Quick Auctions 3). KTQ will queue up in skillet x number of each glyph, so that you have in your possession between all your alts, that number of glyphs. ie, if you have 5 glyphs on your banker, and 3 in the AH, and your threshold is 10, it will queue up 2 of that glyph. You then take your scribe to the ink vendor and click buy mats, and it will exchange ink of the sea for the inks you need, then go to the paper vendor and buy those mats, then start crafting.

Send the glyphs to your bankers, and from there you go to the AH and sell.

QuickAuctions3 will allow you to set an amount to undercut by, a minimum amount to sell glyphs for, and a fallback price if none are in the AH, and a quantity of glyphs to post. You then click post and it will scan the AH as it goes, undercutting your competition, and posting your desired quantity of glyphs. Generally it takes me about 20 min a day to cancel / repost glyphs, and I post 3 of every glyph available, organized by class across 2 bank toons. Then it takes me 1-3 hours of mostly afk / tv time on the weekend to rebuild my glyph stock. I generally make about 1k / day with basically minimal effort.

Engineering on a hunter is a DPS increase - best cloak enchant - +1 extra Agi over standard enchant in addition to the nifty parachute ;)

Glove enchant (rocket launcher) are also a slight DPS increase over +20 Agi (haste enchant is a minor DPS loss last time I checked).

Rocket boots are also a solid alternative to any of the other boot enchants that include a speed increase - and being blown into the air is always worth a giggle as long as it doesn't happen kiting Anub with 50 attempts left ;)

Having said although the DPS increases alone aren't a good enough reason to re-roll from another profession - then again I'm an engineer IRL and have been in game since level 10 - I held off re-rolling profs when engineering became meh and now reaping the benefits.

When I joined my raiding guild I was the only engineer at least 5 of our regular raiders have now re-rolled to it so it can't all be bad .

I have to agree with one of the anonymous comments up there. Not to throw a wrench in your plans, but dropping mining on your main to pick up alchemy is also an alternative. I'm JC/Alch and i LOVE IT. I xmute my own gems, and have yet to buy one with all my gear sets you know i have.

Also, Mixology makes up for anything short of Blacksmithing sockets and you only have to use half the flasks and elixirs. My Flask gives me almost 2k health and lasts for two hours. It's a Win/Win and it is the easiest non gathering profession to level. I would level herb on one of your alts, saving absolutely everything, then make pots for a few hours and you will be 450 on Honors.

My advice might be more pointed at saving money spent than making money. I am a terrible altoholic so I know what you mean about it getting expensive when the upgrades start flowing. A huge money saver for me is to make sure each toon gets into Wintergrasp and does all of the quests each week. It takes about 30 minutes and will net you about 18k honor, if we win. Also, you will get 40-50 stone keeper shards which can be traded in for more honor (30 shards for 2k honor).

With the honor, I go to the JC vendor in the PVP hut in Orgrimmar and trade it for gems (10k honor per gem). I have never had to pay for an epic gem by doing this.